My son’s room is like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Toppled block buildings and crayon-wrapper debris lay atop overturned die-cast cars and plastic little-people corpses. Blankets have tumbled to the floor like a California mud-slide. I don’t want to think about the refugees hastily rushed under the bed.

I’ve seen this before, in my own room, years ago. I can still hear my mom hollering at me to clean up my act. I can remember those times when she would look at me, exasperated, and say: “Someday, you’ll be grown up. You’re going to have a kid, and you’ll understand.”

Mom didn’t live long enough to see my kids, or to hear me apologize to her for all the grief I put her through. But she was right. I’m all grown up, and I’m beginning to understand.

On my desk there spins a block of glass, glowing blue, then green, then red. Inside the glass is the ghostly shape of a tree and words that you might find in a greeting card:

DAD

You are a
source of strength,
a teacher and a guide.
You are the one
that’s looked up to,
with loving trust
and pride.

It’s one of those sentimental, one-size-fits-all gifts that you find in the hallways of shopping malls in a kiosk next to Cell-Phone City and the Piercing Pagoda. It was a Christmas gift from my children, which means that it was a Christmas gift from my wife.

When I opened it, I was happy. Not because it was the gift I had secretly always wanted, but because of the look on my kids’ faces as I opened it. They were happy to see their daddy open his present, but were absolutely thrilled that they’d made it so long without letting slip what it would be.